Montego Bay, St James -The Jamaica Cancer Society is set to benefit from a $250,000 donation raised last week by MACO Destinations, the Caribbean’s and Latin America’s newest travel magazine – an offshoot of MACO Caribbean Living – at its Jamaica launch at Silent Waters Villa in Montego Bay.

The money was raised through an auction that saw purchases by top Montego Bay businessmen, including Patrick Casserly of e-Services and Winston Deer of Lagoon Development.

Owner and editor-in-chief of the magazine, Trinidadian Neysha Soodeen, said it was only natural for the company to raise the money for the cancer society.

“In everything I do, I support them [cancer society],” said Soodeen, who is herself a survivor of thyroid cancer.

“All proceeds of the auction will go towards the organisation.”

The cancer society welcomed the donation, saying it would go a long way in aiding the organisation’s screening and education programmes.

“MACO has raised funds for us in the past,” said administrator Kim Mair. “This comes at an opportune time as October is breast cancer awareness month, and we will be increasing our efforts in screening and educating women all over Jamaica,” Mair added.

Soodeen said she got the inspiration for the first publication after she returned home to Trinidad in 1999, because of illness. “I returned home to Trinidad to find my mother and her friends reading overseas magazines,” she told the Observer. “So I asked them, why are you reading about the homes in the US? That’s not how we live!”

It was then that MACO Caribbean Living, a magazine featuring Caribbean homes and architecture, was born and launched in October 1999. Soodeen, who was 29-years-old at the time and had studied Criminology in Canada, said she knew nothing about publishing but was so passionate about it that she just forged ahead.

“The Caribbean has a signature style, it’s sexy and alluring and fun and that can only be truly portrayed by Caribbean people,” she told the Observer at last week’s launch of the magazine in Montego Bay.

Today, MACO is an all-female, ten-member team of Caribbean people.

“I believe 100 per cent in supporting your own,” she remarked. And with growth of the magazine came new frontiers and hence the newest addition, MACO Destinations, a travel magazine geared at the high-end Caribbean and Central American travel market.

“It’s not high-end in terms of price,” Soodeen was quick to explain. “It’s high-end in terms of not going to a hotel and spending the entire week there. It’s going out to the restaurants and art galleries, spending a little bit of money on unique destinations,” she added.

She anticipates tremendous success for MACO Destinations, and boasts that already the publication is the only Caribbean magazine sold fully international, and has now been selected as the readers’ pick for Barnes and Noble for the month of October. “That means, it will be on the front shelves of all Barnes and Nobles bookstores all over the US.”

Last Saturday’s launch was in association with Caribbean Producers Jamaica Limited (CPJ), which also unveiled two of its newest products: Canoaa natural fruit juice from Colombia, and FIJI Water, a deluxe bottled water from the famous Fiji Islands.